Sergei Yesenin

Where, My Childhood's Home, Art Thou

Where, My Childhood's Home, Art Thou - meaning Summary

Longing for Vanished Childhood

Yesenin's poem is a nostalgic address to a vanished rural childhood. The speaker calls for his childhood home and small familiar features—flowers, sand, a cock's cry—only to find them transformed or swept away. Time and weather are agents of loss, portrayed as relentless forces that speed change and uproot simple scenes. The repeated questions and images underline aching longing and the impossibility of return to an irretrievable past.

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Where, my childhood's home, art thou, Warm beneath the hillock's brow? And my little blue, blue bud, And the sand where no one trod? Where, my childhood's home, art thou? Past the river sings the cock. There the shepherd grazed his flock And amid the water's play Shone three stars from far away. Past the river sings the cock. Time, a windmill with a wing. Makes the pendulum moon to swing Past the village, on the grain. Speeds for hours the unseen rain. Time, a windmill with a wing. Rain with arrows in a crowd Has convulsed my home with cloud, Mowed the blue bud from the land, Trampled down the golden sand, Rain with arrows in a crowd.

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